FORT WORTH, Texas — Jay Monahan knows that the Charles Schwab Challenge is unlike any other event he’s reigned over as PGA Tour commissioner. Although the TV crews are smaller than normal for this event at Colonial Country Club, the TV audience will likely be larger than ever as a sports-starved country looks to finally consume a live product.
Monahan met with the media in advance of the tournament’s first round and said he has leaned on leaders from the other major sports, who wanted to share their ideas about returning but will also certainly be watching the Tour’s progress to see any missteps they can avoid.
“I would just say that as an industry, there was a lot of collaboration between the leagues. I had a number of individual conversations with other commissioners,” Monahan said. “Really from the outset, really each league and its leadership was in an incredibly challenging position because our core competency is not preparing for a pandemic and having plans in place to respond to a pandemic.
“And so like us, every league was talking to medical experts, epidemiologists, companies in the healthcare space, local and state government officials, so invariably we were checking in on each other to understand where we were in our return and how we were thinking about that, issues that affect our return in terms of number of events played, for us number of events played relative to eligibility.”
Betting odds | Fantasy | By the rankings | Tee times, TV info
Of course, a meeting of the minds started this process as Monahan and LPGA commissioner Mike Whan were among the multitude of U.S. sports figures named to an advisory group by President Trump.
Monahan and Whan were on the committee along with the commissioners of the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL as well as the heads of UFC, NASCAR, WWE, USTA and WNBA, among others.
Monahan said these conversations netted some interesting ideas.
[vertical-gallery id=778047874]
“I was on a number of calls with all of the other league commissioners as part of the reopening of America task force and had a lot of individual conversations along the way, really in the past I’d say 30 to 45 days, more around testing and testing protocols and how we were handling it and learning more about how other sports are handling it,” he said.
“More importantly than me speaking to my peers at our leagues, the team that was leading our health and safety protocols is speaking to their counterparts at the leagues, sharing information, and one of the things I’m most proud of is that as an industry, this has pulled us together more so than almost any event because we were in a position where we were all away for a long period of time, we weren’t sure when we were going to come back, but we all knew what we had to address to come back, and then we all had different factors to lead into our ability to do so.”
So is Monahan worried to be the first one out of the gate? Or is he feeling extra pressure to produce a hiccup-free event? He said this week that he believes others are taking notes but also hoping to find a blueprint they can follow.
“Do we feel a responsibility? Absolutely. I think everybody is watching, Monahan said. “I’ve gotten a lot of nice emails and text messages of encouragement, and I think everyone wants to see this go off exceedingly well and for us to accomplish the same goal they have, which is a safe and healthy return, and to do it in a manner that is actually recognizing the challenges that this virus presents.”
[lawrence-related id=778048295,778047558,778048208,778048163]